


The Advantage of Defeat

by TheWasAndShouldBeKing



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5334350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWasAndShouldBeKing/pseuds/TheWasAndShouldBeKing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If the Guardians thought Pitch would get his comeuppance at the hooves of his minions, they were gravely mistaken. The old adage "live and learn" has never had more sinister connotations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Advantage of Defeat

**Author's Note:**

> This drabble is unrelated to anything else I've got planned for my RotG writing. It's just something that came to mind, thinking about how long Pitch has been losing to the Guardians, and the consequences of our heroes' 'Only Light is Right' mindset that's pushed Pitch into a desperate corner.

  
Patches of iridescent black glittered in the spectral light like puddles of oil slick, sedentary, lifeless. The remains of perhaps a dozen Nightmares, the last of a once formidable army that had turned upon, and then been laid low by their own defeated general.

Pitch Black stepped between the pools, the edges of his long robe scraping through the grains. Pale golden eyes stared hard at the Iron Globe, at the world-wide rash of brilliant, yellow lights. Believers. Practically every one that he had conquered, now returned. Pitch would find it more disheartening, except...

Why had he not seen it before? He'd been so caught up, fighting the same bloodless war that he'd been waging against the Guardians for centuries, that he'd not paid any mind to the startling truth: the children were still important, yes, to both sides, but _a child_... one, or two, a dozen, or a _thousand_... In this age, they were no longer precious.

They'd been priceless in the Dark Ages. Every single boy and girl of them, rare, sentient creatures, all too easily wiped out by war, plague, famine, or disaster. They'd still been well worth fighting for in the Guardian's new Age of Enlightenment, though Pitch had lost ground decade by decade, century by century, until the failure had been nearly too mortifying to bear.

He'd made this last stand as though they were still fighting over those far flung settlements, choosing Burgess as his new foothold in the world, but it was here on the Globe, plain as the nose on his angular face. North had once told Pitch the world was changing, and the Boogeyman had shrugged off the warning. It had been his own peril, but Pitch wondered, when North looked at his own Globe at the Pole, did he see the new shift in the world's energies?

The Moon and his starry-eyed crusaders thought the world no longer needed the Boogeyman, that dreams and wonder left no room for fear. So naive, they believed they could keep him at bay indefinitely, that even Pitch himself might be persuaded by their bravado, and perhaps remain in cloistered exile down here in the lair. Such blind folly. In truth, the world of the Guardians was as thin and unstable as the very crust of the Earth, floating tenuously on the Darkness below.

Pitch ghosted his shattered, bloodied fingertips over the rust-flecked iron, painting a patch of the lights in tar-black liquid. It could begin in homes with siblings. He'd make his own believers of the witnesses. They would tell stories, and in this era of light-speed information, those stories would easily weave into the present consciousness.

He could feel it, radiating down through the earth, the fears of the _billions_ on the surface. It was _rampant_. It was _ripe_. Space had already been made, and Pitch had only to truly reach out and _take_ for himself.

This was an Age of _Terror_.


End file.
